The Other Side: Crossroads (Book 2)
by ChapterEight
Summary: Sirius Black was entangled in more secrets and lies than anybody had a right to be. It wasn't like his Light friends and Dark family had left him any choice, with their utterly opposite expectations of him. All Sirius could do was try to finish Hogwarts without everything crashing down around him first, but he was pretty sure his heart and the brewing war had made that impossible.
1. Late August, 1975

**Series Summary** (because FFN does not have a system for handling series) **:** When Sirius Black ran away from home, it was the result of five years of being pushed and pulled between his Dark family and Light friends. Contrary to what he told Harry, nothing about choosing sides had been easy. He was just an excellent liar, especially about his mixed loyalties, his Dark past, and his role as the Dark's most successful spy.

 **Author's Note:** This is the second book of a series, the first being _The Other Side: Thick and Thin_ , which is available from my profile. You should read that one first or else you will be super confused by a lot of things. The titles in the series are taken from songs by the band Avenged Sevenfold, which provided a lot of the inspiration for certain elements of the story.

Although the last book had chapters averaging 13,000 words, I am not aiming for that with this one. This time I am aiming for somewhere between 6000 and 9000 words per chapter (excluding notes). This is mostly because now that I am adulting fulltime, I don't have as much time as I used to, and I hate making you guys wait so long for updates.

* * *

 _A Year Later..._

Although he stubbornly squinted his eyes against the light as he started to wake, once Sirius became aware of the oppressive heat against him, he knew that he wouldn't be able to doze back off again. He pushed the hot body pressed up against his side away and tried to roll over, but his friend was lying on part of his t-shirt. Sirius flopped back into place with a grunt—it wasn't midday yet, so it was at least a few hours too early for him to be articulate—and threw his arms across his face to shield his eyes from the sunlight filtering through the flimsy, lacy things that Mrs. Potter tried to pass off as curtains.

He always got stuck sharing a bed with Peter, because the smaller boy was a massive cuddler in his sleep, and James liked to play the "It's _my_ house!" card to avoid bunking with him.

Sirius silently cursed the Potters' no-magic-outside-of-school-policy for probably the hundredth time that summer. He couldn't just transfigure an extra bed during their sleepovers like he could have done at home (not that they didn't have enough guest bedrooms at home, and not that his friends were ever invited to Grimmauld Place anyway).

He would have felt bad asking either of James's parents to transfigure an extra bed. Sure it would have been easy for them, but one shouldn't go around pointing out the deficiencies of other peoples' homes, right? Neither of them had ever offered, and Sirius had figured out pretty quickly that they thought it was normal for kids to share beds at sleepovers.

There was always the option of Flooing home at night, of course, but being home would only make running into his grandfather more likely. They had both been doing their utmost to avoid one another since Sirius's not-really-an-accident a year ago. His fourth year at Hogwarts had been a nice escape from Grimmauld Place, but since coming home for the summer he'd found that it was easier to stay with his friends than with his family.

When the sticky and unpleasant midsummer heat of two bodies became too much for him to handle, Sirius carefully cracked his eyes open and wrested himself out of Peter's grasp. The other boy grumbled and seemed for a few moments like he would wake, but then he just twisted himself free of the damp sheet and settled back into sleep.

That was a relief. Sirius was hoping to sneak out of the house without having to deal with his friends teasing him.

Mrs. Potter was puttering around near the oven when Sirius descended the narrow back staircase into the kitchen. A quizzical eyebrow quirked at the sight of his still-damp hair. "No drying spells, dear?"

"Frizz, Mrs. Potter. It's the number one problem for those who dry indiscriminately," he replied seriously as he ran his fingers through his thick locks to haphazardly push it out of his eyes.

She grinned at him then. "Have you got a date?"

Sirius was struck for a moment by how attractive the Black features looked on such a friendly, open expression. His own mother was almost always serious, unless she was downright severe. He smiled back.

"Yes, as a matter of fact. I'm meeting Janice in Diagon Alley."

He used her resulting giggles as a distraction and managed to slip out of the kitchen without being cajoled into a seat and force-fed whatever she was working on. Really, he was continually surprised that a woman who had been born as a Black could cook _at all_ , but her cooking wasn't that good.

The Floo trip to the Leaky Cauldron was much longer from Godric's Hollow than from Grimmauld Place, but Sirius managed not to make a total fool of himself when he stumbled into the pub. It was between the breakfast and lunch crowds, as he had planned, and he was able to make it out the door and into Muggle London without drawing any attention. He didn't really have a date with Janice; he had a lesson with his uncle, at Alphard's house in Mayfair.

His life was a big bag of lies: His family thought that he was at the Potters', and the Potters thought that he was with Janice.

Really the only girl that he was likely to see all day was the pretty Muggle girl who spoke to him as he was opening the gate separating his uncle's property from the public sidewalk.

"Hello," she said, repositioning the strap of her leather satchel higher on her shoulder. "I'm Lauren. Lauren Ellis."

Sirius surveyed her with a quick, well-practiced eye. She had the straight blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes that he understood other girls coveted, and she was wearing a dress in the Muggle style. That is to say, with a skirt high enough above her knees that his mother would have had a fit had she seen it, and any girl at Hogwarts would have received an automatic detention. He offered her an easy smile.

"Hello, Lauren Lauren Ellis. I'm Sirius Sirius Black."

She giggled, although it wasn't particularly funny. Sirius had learned that his face—and also, Janice assured him, the hair he refused to have cut—had that effect on girls.

After a moment, she seemed to more fully register what he'd said and gave him a quizzical look. "Serious? That's an, er… unusual name."

Was it? Lots of Blacks had been named Sirius (he was actually Sirius Black VIII) and nobody had ever told him before that it was unusual. Sure no one except Blacks had ever been named it, at least not that he knew of, but that was just a matter of respect. A Black wouldn't name one of his children Rabastan or Lucius or Bilius, just like a Lestrange or Malfoy or Weasley wouldn't name one of his children Sirius. (Well, maybe a Weasley would. They didn't have any respect for how things worked.)

"It's Sirius like the star," he elaborated.

"Oh, yes, of course. That's very interesting," she replied with a smile.

From the look on her face, Sirius guessed that she didn't _actually_ know what he was talking about. Did they not teach astronomy in Muggle schools? Come to think of it, this was the first conversation he'd ever really had with a Muggle that didn't involve polite small talk with shop employees and cab drivers, so perhaps she was just unintelligent and it wasn't a deficiency of the Muggle school system at all. As she seemed to have exhausted her conversational abilities on that point, he was unsurprised when she changed the subject.

"I've never seen you around here before. Well, I mean, I never saw you before this summer, but lately it seems like I see you all the time. I live just over there, you see"—Here she pointed at the house across the street and absentmindedly used her other hand to hoist her bag back up her shoulder again.—"and I've seen you from the window."

Sirius had no particular interest in continuing the conversation—she was a _Muggle_ , after all, and not quite pretty enough to make him overlook it—but he had been wishing for months that he could twist the story of Friedrich Braun into some sort of tragic hero's tale and receive all sorts of fawning attention for it, so he leaned in closer and explained in a low voice, as if he were sharing a state secret, "Well, I have lessons with my due—uh, fencing master in the afternoon. My grandfather won't let me fence at home anymore after a horrible accident with my last instructor—very tragic, very bloody—so I have to sneak out and meet him here, at my uncle's house, to continue my training in secret."

" _Oh_!" gasped Lauren. She leaned a bit closer, until her long hair was brushing his arm. "What happened?"

"Oh, it was awful, a real freak accident—" began Sirius, but he was cut off when a stern voice said his name.

"Sirius!" called his uncle from the front door, somehow managing to make his words carry very authoritatively down to the sidewalk without seeming to raise his voice overmuch. "Are you going to keep us waiting all day?"

Sirius straightened back to his full height with another smile, as if he didn't notice at all the way that the girl was dying from curiosity. "Oh, well, I guess I'd better go. See you around, Lauren."

He knew that he wouldn't really see her around, since he was leaving for Hogwarts next week, so he barely managed to politely hear her disappointed but hopeful reply before he turned on his heel and continued up towards the house.

Alphard hadn't even waited until he'd closed the door fully behind him before he asked, half on a laugh, "What in Salazar's name was that?"

"I don't know, just some Muggle girl who started talking to me." Sirius shrugged. "Lauren something."

"Ellis?" asked Alphard. He had a curious expression on his face that worried Sirius for half a second before he continued, "She's the daughter of some Muggle lord or other, I believe. Perhaps you should present her to your mother as a suitable substitute for Lucilla Lestrange."

Sirius barked out a laugh as they entered his uncle's study. "Maybe if she were a princess…"

Alphard turned and met his eye, and neither of them lasted for more than a few moments before cracking up completely. Even if she were the crown princess of England and Sirius would become her king, she still wouldn't be suitable for the scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Imagining Walburga's reaction to the idea was a thing of such enormous absurdity that they could only laugh.

Sirius, of course, thought in general that his mother's obsession with securing his marriage even before he finished Hogwarts was so absurd that if he didn't find some humor in it then he'd probably spend all of his time being resentful and frightened.

When they had calmed down sufficiently, Alphard asked, "Why did you talk to her in the first place?"

Sirius shrugged again (his father kept telling him it was a nasty habit he'd developed, but he found that he couldn't stop). "Why not? I liked the attention."

"You are completely unbearable," his uncle informed him, not for the first time.

Sirius laughed again, not at all bothered by his uncle's assessment. Although later, once they had begun their Occlumency lesson, he made a point of thinking about the most arrogance-affirming memory he could think of.

He was flushed with exhilaration and not a little windburn when he brought his Nimbus to a screeching halt mere feet from where Rabastan was standing. There was no telling how long the other boy had been waiting for him. Sirius hadn't had the chance to fly his broom at such breakneck speeds and try out so many death-defying maneuvers for nearly a year, since the last summer break, and he had so lost himself in it that he had lost track of time. Playing Quidditch for the house team was nice enough, but it was all about formations and plans and not at all about reckless abandon, and James Potter would not suffer pointless fun on his practice field.

Sirius bounced off his broom with a wide smile and a laugh, catching himself using Rabastan's shoulders and pressing a sloppy kiss to the other boy's mouth. They were alone, after all, unless Sirius's cousin or Rabastan's brother were spying on them from the windows of their cottage, which overlooked the meadow Sirius had claimed as his own. And if they were, then it was their own fault if they saw something they didn't like.

Rabastan caught him around the waist and, in a rare moment of carefree play, spun them around until they fell down among the soft grass and daisies and buttercups.

When the older boy finally pulled back and stared down at him with a kind of intensity that Sirius didn't immediately recognize, Sirius felt his cheeks begin to reheat.

"What?"

"Nothing!" said Rabastan abruptly, almost guiltily. Then he twisted his mouth into a smile and continued, "Well, not _nothing_. I was just thinking how gorgeous you are, and how much I needed this."

The pressure in Sirius's mind, which had been building up steadily all the while, became too much suddenly, and he found himself sucking in a breath and staring into his uncle's flinty, annoyed eyes.

Alphard pursed his lips together in a way that made him uncannily resemble his sister. "I thought the point of these little lessons is for you to bury any thought of Lestrange so deeply that nobody could ever find it. Do you _want_ to be exiled as an abomination?"

With that, Sirius's previously good mood evaporated in less than an instant. He gripped the arm of his chair tightly to prevent himself from doing anything else.

"Well, I could always use thoughts of Janice instead," he finally replied frostily, after he'd somewhat reigned in his emotions, "or maybe of these secret lessons with you. Or the ones I have with Dolohov even though I've been expressly forbidden. Or maybe of some Quidditch practices with James that actually don't exist at all, or the very real illegal Animagus lessons…"

"I get the point," cut in the older man. He looked at Sirius for a few moments as if examining him under a microscope, then finally said, "Nobody ever claimed that it would be easy. No matter who wants to access your mind, you will have a lot to hide. Hell, _I_ managed to find out about your boyfriend and your Animagus plan within the first two times I used Legilimency on you, and I'm not the most accomplished Legilimens. But you should not waste our lessons by deliberately uncovering memories you ought to be hiding."

"I know," answered Sirius. Then he added, "And he's not my boyfriend. He's just a friend. Who I snog."

He didn't usually allow himself to be bitter or frustrated about all the various lies he'd managed to get caught up in, so it was doubly annoying when his uncle looked at him with something too close to pity. Just to spite him, Sirius spent the whole rest of the lesson remembering the last family dinner Alphard had attended, where Grandmother Irma had spent the whole two hours harassing her son about marrying some unfortunate looking, recently widowed daughter of one of her society friends.

If his uncle was annoyed by it, he was smart enough not to complain.

Sirius had a dueling lesson with Dolohov that afternoon, so after Alphard finished with him he made his way down the long corridor towards the large double doors. It was a huge relief—Occlumency was definitely not one of his strong suits, but he loved dueling, and after the emotional highs and lows of the past few hours he definitely needed the chance to mercilessly attack something.

One of the doors was slightly ajar, just enough for Sirius to be able to see the dueler closest to him. It was Evan Rosier. He'd grown taller and thinner over the summer, and his hair had grown longer and lighter. He looked good. And he looked like he was naturally talented at dueling. He must have only started training at the beginning of the summer, because he was going through exercises that Sirius hadn't had to do in two years, but he was clearly better at doing them than Sirius had been when he had been a beginner.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you that it isn't polite to spy at doorways?" Dolohov suddenly boomed.

Evan stopped what he was doing and spun around to see who had been watching. He froze when he saw Sirius. Sirius rolled his eyes and stepped fully into the room with the sneer he usually adopted when he wanted to antagonize his dueling instructor.

"I think you've confused my mother with someone else."

Dolohov made a sound somewhere between a snort and a cough, which Sirius recognized as him trying not to laugh. For his part, Evan looked like he might choke on his own tongue, but Sirius couldn't tell if it was from trying not to laugh or trying not to vomit. He was apparently really afraid of Dolohov's reactions, just like Sirius had been when he'd first met the man. Well... like he'd been before he'd known that the man was shagging Alphard. It was difficult to get the image out of his head and even more difficult to be afraid of the man in the image.

When Dolohov recovered, he crossed the room and slapped Sirius's shoulder none-too-gently with one of his enormous hands as he used the other to check his pocket watch. "Time's up, Mr. Rosier. You can show yourself out, and be sure to improve those spell combinations before I see you next."

Evan lifted his stare from the hand still draped casually across Sirius's shoulder and met Sirius's eyes on the way up. Color spread across his olive cheeks, but Sirius only lifted one eyebrow in a silent question.

"Bye, Sirius," the other boy managed to say. "I'll, uh, see you at the Lestranges' this weekend?"

Sirius and Rosier had barely spoken more than a handful of words to each other since they were children, but that wasn't for lack of trying on Rosier's part. Rabastan had convinced Sirius over a year ago that the grudge he had been holding against his former friend was more than a little unfair, but that didn't mean Sirius wanted to be his friend again. He didn't actively dislike the Slytherin anymore, but he didn't like him either. Rosier tried to engage him in conversation every time they ended up at a family function or some Slytherin event together, but Sirius made a point of only responding with distant civility.

"Oh, were you invited?" he asked. Of course he knew that Rosier had been invited—all of the pure-blood Slytherins had been—but he still let a slight edge of incredulous condescension creep into his tone, as if he disapproved. "Well, then yes, I guess you will see me there."

The color on Evan's cheeks deepened, but he only nodded and, after offering a stammered goodbye to Dolohov, walked stiffly to the fireplace on the other end of the ballroom. Most of Dolohov's students had to Floo in and out from that fireplace and weren't allowed in the rest of the house. Sirius was a special exception on account of it also being his uncle's house. And, of course, on account of it being stupid to use the Floo Network to travel somewhere he wasn't supposed to be.

"You shouldn't have let him see me," he told Dolohov after the other boy had disappeared in a swirl of green smoke.

Dolohov snorted. "What, are you worried that he'll think the Blacks can't afford for me to make house calls for you?"

Sirius rolled his eyes and released his wand from its arm holster and into his hand, giving it an experimental twirl in his fingers.

"No. I'm worried that he'll tell somebody I'm still taking lessons from you even though everybody knows my grandfather sacked you." Dolohov scowled, but Sirius was undeterred. "But now that you mention it, how can Evan Rosier afford to take lessons with you?"

"What makes you think that I'll share my clients' financial arrangements with the likes of you, brat?"

Sirius pinned him with a flat stare.

"Fine!" Dolohov growled after a few moments and ran the fingers of one hand through his dark hair in frustration. "Just like your uncle, I swear… I took him on for a pittance. The boy shows more promise than most, and his father wants him to do his best when he's old enough to take the Mark in a few years. And I owed Evan—the senior one, that is—a favor."

Sirius could vaguely recall, at the edges of his memory, that his parents had mentioned something about the elder Rosier's connections when they'd been shopping for his first Hogwarts list and his mother had been complaining about Evan and Mrs. Rosier interrupting them. He supposed now, with the benefit of hindsight, that they had been talking about the fact that Mr. Rosier was a Death Eater. He wanted to ask what sort of favor Dolohov could have possibly owed that he'd been convinced to take on a student for barely any money, but he could sense that Dolohov was done sharing for the time being.

"Fine," he said instead.

"Fine," replied Dolohov. "Now, were you planning to duel today or just to gossip?"

Sirius responded with an exaggerated bow towards his instructor, sweeping his wand arm back behind him in the traditional manner that his instructor found frivolous and silly.

Dolohov shot a Stunner at him that he almost didn't have time to deflect before it hit him. He let out a delighted bark of laughter as he spun away from the resulting explosion of sparks where he'd just been standing, slashing his wand back up through the air as he went and sending a vicious slicing hex towards Dolohov. For Sirius, the fluid movements and constant flow of one wand movement into another were almost as fun as flying.

By the time he and Dolohov finished their two-hour session, Sirius was rather late getting back to the Potters'. He quickly learned that Remus had already gone home to prepare for the next full moon, but Peter and James wasted no time bundling Sirius into James's bedroom.

"That was a long date," said James as he eyed Sirius's still slightly disheveled state. Sirius had put himself as much to rights as he could after the dueling lesson, but there was only so much that magic could do without the aid of a shower and change of clothes.

"Too long to have spent it all window shopping," put in Peter, his good humor making his normally dull eyes seem brighter than usual.

James nodded vigorously in agreement. "It's almost as if you're hiding something from us."

Perhaps Sirius's breath froze for just a moment, until he caught the suggestive leer Peter was giving him.

"Oh, come on," he protested with a groan. He threw himself carelessly across James's bed. "I told you that we haven't done… you know, _it_."

"Then what do you _do_ together all day with a girl?" asked James incredulously. "You can't have that much to talk about, and she's pretty, but you can't spend all day just looking at her."

Sirius waved his hand vaguely in the air but didn't sit up to look at his friends. "Have you shared these thoughts with dear Lily? That might be the reason she keeps telling you to get stuffed."

Sirius couldn't see, but he knew that a flush had run up James's neck and across his face, part in embarrassment and part anger.

"Shut up, Black!"

"That isn't why she keeps saying no anyway," interjected Peter. Again, Sirius didn't have to look to know that James was paying rapt attention to everything the other boy said… and doing everything he could to make it seem like he didn't care at all. "She told Remus that she says no because you're a bully and you treat her best friend like garbage."

" _I_ treat _Snape_ like garbage?" echoed James. Sirius really wasn't sure how much of his incredulity was genuine and how much was magnified for effect. "He started it!"

They had been over this many times since James had professed his undying love for probably the one girl who would never have him, and Sirius was more than a little sick of the topic. He flopped over onto his stomach with an annoyed groan.

"I know it's my own fault for bringing her up, but please can we go one day without talking about how James will never snog Evans?"

James's offended "OI!" was almost drowned out by Peter's hiccupping laughter.

Sirius saw James coming from across the room, but he still didn't really have time to prepare for it before the other boy landed on his back. The blow was mostly absorbed by the thick mattress, but from his position on his stomach it was still difficult for Sirius to do anything to retaliate as James's fingers dug into his ribs. He only struggled half-heartedly anyway; he acted like he disliked it, but really he enjoyed the casualness of his friendships in Gryffindor, which was an astronomical contrast to the polite, restrained behavior he'd grown up around.

Just when he thought he would suffocate from laughter, he managed to roll them so that James was pinned under Sirius's more substantial body weight.

"Cut it out, Potter," he wheezed through lungfuls of air. "Your parents aren't going to be gone for much longer."

"Whose fault," gasped Potter from underneath him, "is that?"

It took a lot of pushing and shoving, but eventually they managed to sort themselves out. Peter was standing on the other side of the room with his arms crossed, and Sirius offered him a small smile over James's head. Peter disapproved of their occasional bouts of roughhousing, mostly because he wasn't confident enough to join in. Sirius secretly couldn't blame him, since he didn't seem to have grown very much at all even though all of his friends and classmates had been shooting up like weeds, but he liked the other boy enough not to say anything about it.

"What's on the agenda for today, Peter?" he asked, not because he hadn't read the books and helped make their training schedule himself, but because he wanted to make his friend feel more included.

Peter uncrossed his arms, which Sirius considered progress.

"We've got to keep practicing wandless control," said the shorter boy, "and keep studying the anatomy books. I know you're both eager to try the full transformation, but none of us is ready."

It was maddening having to wait, but Sirius agreed that none of them was ready to try a complete Animagus transformation yet. They had been going through a quite arduous process for the past several years, not the least of which had been having to keep Mandrake leaves in their mouths for an entire month. That had been doubly difficult for Sirius, since he'd had to avoid both Janice and Rabastan unless he'd wanted to explain why he couldn't kiss. And after all of that, now they were in a seemingly endless cycle of practice and research.

Sirius was glad that at least he'd been able to figure out what sort of animal he would become. He couldn't imagine what it would have been like to have to wait for years to figure out what he'd be, but more importantly he couldn't imagine practicing the transformation without knowing exactly what he was supposed to be transforming into. Wandless magic was difficult enough without any additional handicaps being added to the mix.

He let out a little sigh of resignation as he cracked open his copy of _Dog Anatomy_.

He'd managed to procure the book from a Muggle shop that had been only a minor detour from his usual route between the Leaky Cauldron and Uncle Alphard's townhouse. It had been much more difficult to find anatomy books for deer and rats. The shop girl had been willing enough to help him track down what he wanted and special order them, but she had clearly thought that he was some sort of budding serial killer who was practicing on animals.

Today he focused on the forearms. The most tedious part of their training was having to correlate every piece of their Animagus forms' anatomy to some piece of the human anatomy, but it was necessary. Just like with regular Transfiguration, it was important to have a clear mental plan of exactly _how_ one thing would turn to another.

When he was ready, he began with the easiest part: making thick black fur sprout from his arm. It always took a bit of effort to get it started, but it took less effort each time he did it. After he managed to grow the first bit of fur, it was as if a dam had burst and it became incredibly easy to make it spread down to his hand and up towards his shoulder. It made his skin prickle somewhat unpleasantly, but that was nothing to the unpleasantness of having his human arm crack and twist into a dog's front leg. The pain never became easier no matter how often he did it, although the process did become more natural and automatic every time he completed it.

James, as usual, was unable to resist goofing off and had chosen to make antlers and ears spring from beneath his untidy black hair. Peter was still working on the consistency of his grayish-brown fur and hadn't gotten very practicing limb morphing. Sirius was actually a bit worried that Peter's progress would stall even further because of the pain associated with shrinking his body down to rat size.

Overall, they had made great progress for a bunch of teenagers who didn't have anybody helping them. Although Sirius was sure that they could have managed the transformations by now if they could have had help—or at least he and James could have.

The Potters arrived home (Mr. Potter from work and Mrs. Potter from her knitting club) about an hour before suppertime, and that immediately put an end to their Animagus practice. Mrs. Potter had a habit of barging into her son's bedroom without knocking, and the last thing they wanted was to be caught out mid-transformation.

True to form, a few minutes later James's door opened and Dorea poked her head into the room. By then they had set up a game of chess between them, setting up the pieces to make it appear as if James and Peter were in the middle of a game and Sirius had been watching the whole time. If someone more familiar with chess had looked closely, they would have realized that the pieces had been placed rather randomly around the board and didn't resemble anything that actual players would have done in a real game. But Mrs. Potter was not a chess player, so she remained blissfully ignorant.

"Isn't it time for you to head home, dears?" she asked. "I promised your parents that I would have you home today in time for supper."

Sirius wouldn't very well argue unless he wanted to start offering reasons for why he didn't want to go home, so he rose from the cushions on James's floor and stretched, making a sound somewhere between a groan and a yawn that would have appalled his own mother.

Perhaps Sirius was too hard on his mother, he thought. Oh, not that it wasn't completely true that she cloaked herself in high society manners and social niceties as if they were a second skin. And then there was the whole marriage thing. But she did love him and dote on him as best she knew how, and it probably wasn't fair to compare her to Mrs. Potter or to the stories he'd heard about his other friends' parents. After all, Dorea Potter might make half-passable attempts at baking and display a kind of effortless, open affection that Sirius had rarely experienced, but Sirius sincerely doubted that she would have taught her son how to curse school bullies without being caught or helped to cover it up if James had slayed his dueling instructor right there on the antique wood floors in her spare drawing room.

It was kind of a bad feeling to realize that he'd been thinking so meanly of his own mother, so that evening he made an effort to pay special attention to her.

"Here, Mother, allow me," he said when he met her in the hallway as they were both on their way to the dining room.

He took her hand in his and wrapped it securely through his arm, and she looked up at him (for he had outgrown her by now) with an expression that Sirius couldn't really recall seeing since that first shopping trip to Diagon Alley when his father had given him his ring with the Black family seal. It had probably been almost that long since he had willingly shown her this kind of attention, though.

His father and brother watched these proceedings skeptically, of course, and Grandfather Arcturus looked as if it took a Herculean effort for him not to come right out and ask what Sirius was trying to accomplish with his behavior. It struck Sirius then how much his mother did love him, even if she showed it in ways he didn't prefer. If it had been almost anybody else she would have been just as suspicious as the rest of them, but in this case she accepted Sirius's affections like a drowning woman sucking in much needed air.

He paid attention to her all throughout supper, and she happily lapped it all up. Finally, just as the dessert course appeared on the table, she decided to see how far she could push her luck.

"Sirius, my darling, surely you can stay home this Saturday? I understand that everyone will be at Bellatrix's little party, but you have not missed an event or a practice or a sleepover all summer." She said the word _sleepover_ as if she still wasn't quite convinced that it was a real thing and he hadn't just been pulling her leg the whole summer. "You will go to Hogwarts on Monday, and then I will not see you again until December."

"Mother, I've already promised several people that I will be there."

Not the least of whom was Rabastan. Sirius wasn't sure if he would be able to see the other boy again until Christmas either, and he had to admit that at this point he was just a bit more interested in having a proper goodbye with Rabastan than with his mother.

Walburga looked deflated for a moment, but she quickly recovered her mask.

"Oh, well, then you must go. I do wish I had spent more time with you this summer. I will be terribly busy over the holidays, you know, with the final preparations for Narcissa's wedding. Although she was quite right to schedule it in December rather than this summer, because she and Bellatrix should not have people comparing their weddings, and she and dear Lucius will look so fine together with their coloring and all the blues and silvers."

A muffled groan seemed to pass through the four men at the table all at once. They had each heard some version of this speech at least twenty times in the past month alone.

However, Walburga was happy to completely ignore it, if she had even heard it at all, and Sirius found that he could only smile indulgently as she began telling him again about the blue diamonds that her brother Cygnus had been persuaded to purchase so that they could have them set into several pieces of jewelry and a hairnet to complete Narcissa's wedding ensemble.

* * *

Rodolphus and Bellatrix's house was already full of Slytherins when Sirius and Regulus Flooed into their drawing room one right after the other. Bellatrix was apparently monitoring the fireplace for new arrivals, because she had swooped in and placed a kiss on each of Sirius's cheeks almost before he had caught his balance.

She released him just as quickly and turned to do the same to Regulus, but it was obvious from his expression and the way that he turned to present her with only one cheek that he had not yet outgrown his moody pubescent stage. He accepted a single kiss with a distinct lack of grace and then wandered off to join a group of third-year Slytherins with barely a word to either his brother or cousin.

Sirius rolled his eyes and turned back to Bellatrix, bumping her shoulder playfully with his. "This is some party. I've never even met at least half the people here."

"We will begin narrowing it down soon," she said, lowering her voice so that they wouldn't be overheard as she led him towards the dining room. "Right now we are identifying potential recruits, gathering information about them and feeling out their loyalties."

Sirius had no idea what she was talking about, and he had no intention of asking her to elaborate. He hadn't broken the news to her yet that the chances of him becoming a Death Eater were slim to none, due to his grandfather's ultimatum that should he join then he would be disowned. He wasn't exactly afraid of her reaction, but she _was_ just a tad fanatical about the Dark Lord so Sirius maintained a healthy level of anxiety about what she would do or say when she found out. It was best to just avoid the subject altogether as much as possible.

Only Rabastan knew, and he usually avoided bringing it up.

The dining room furniture had been moved or Vanished somewhere, and what remained was a relatively large space full of people of all ages mingling in various groups. Sirius didn't see anybody he recognized as younger than Regulus, and nobody was older than Rodolphus and Bellatrix, but everything in between seemed to be fair game. He nodded hello to Flint, whom he had met briefly a few summers ago in Diagon Alley, and Bellatrix introduced him to several older Slytherins he'd never properly spoken to before. Then she moved away to go back to the fireplace and he found himself standing in a group with Will Avery, Nigel Mulciber, and a Slytherin girl Sirius recognized but had never spoken to.

"This is Eleanor Greengrass," Avery finally thought to introduce her, but only after she'd pointedly tugged at his arm. "Sorry, I thought you knew two knew each other. We're in the same year."

Sirius vaguely recalled having classes with Eleanor—she'd sat two tables behind him in Potions last year, if he remembered correctly—but he'd never paid attention to the Slytherin girls.

"Of course," he replied and dutifully brought her hand up for a brief kiss. "I apologize; I should really try to get to know more people in Slytherin."

Greengrass smiled at him, perfectly white teeth contrasting with the berry-colored lipstick she was wearing. "Oh, that's all right. We know enough about each other, I'm sure."

People in normal social circles probably would have taken that as some sort of insult or dismissal, but Sirius recognized it for what it was: acceptance of the fact that what was important was their lineages and relative wealth. The Greengrass family was one of the only twenty-eight remaining families that was truly pure, as were the Blacks and Averys, but there weren't a whole lot of options among twenty-eight families.

Sirius could not imagine accepting such a thing as quietly as Eleanor. Although he did have to admit she would be miles better than Lucilla Lestrange, he had absolutely no intention of even thinking about marrying her, even if she was clearly assessing him with an eye towards that outcome.

Sirius could see Lucilla from across the room, looking as disagreeable and judgmental as ever. If he had been inclined to dislike Lucilla before just on account of the way she treated her brother, even before he'd known why exactly, then he was doubly or even triply determined to dislike her now that he shared in, as she saw it, Rabastan's homosexual sickness. Not that she knew that or, if Sirius had his way, ever would.

He was saved from the rest of the potentially awkward conversation by the sudden appearance of Rabastan Lestrange himself at his side. He stood far enough away to be absolutely proper and not draw any suspicion, and maybe even a little further away than that, but that didn't stop Sirius's entire body from immediately heating up at his presence.

"Sirius," he rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest, so that it was all Sirius could do not to growl back at him, "I didn't know you'd arrived."

"It's no matter," replied Sirius. "Elena has been keeping us entertained."

Mulciber snorted loudly enough to draw the attention of the people in the group standing nearest to theirs.

"It's Eleanor," she said through a laugh, but he could tell that her jaw was clenched in some mixture of embarrassment and anger.

Of course he remembered her name. But she had been eyeing Rabastan with way too much interest for Sirius's tastes. Sirius knew that he was being quite irrational in his anger and even more irrational in his possessiveness of the older man, but he didn't care.

"Right," he responded carelessly.

Rabastan's foot nudged his just before he said, just as dismissively, "Well, Sirius is needed elsewhere. Enjoy the rest of your evening."

He spun on his heel without waiting for the proper responses, and Sirius followed behind him after only a nod of acknowledgement towards Avery and Mulciber. They were something between acquaintances and friends, after all, and he didn't want to completely snub them.

"You are an utter dick," Rabastan told him as soon as he'd shut the door to the small potions lab behind them.

Sirius didn't bother to deny it. Instead he raised an eyebrow and asked, "Oh, is this where I'm supposedly needed? Do you need me to brew you a subtlety potion?"

Rabastan grinned wolfishly and nabbed Sirius by the wrist, pulling him closer so that Sirius could feel his warm breath across his face.

"Depends. Do you want me to be subtle, or do you want me to kiss you?"

"It depends," echoed Sirius, although his question was a bit more serious. "Do you really think that we won't be missed?"

His friend pressed a kiss to his jaw that was more tender than it had a right to be given the lecherous gleam in Rabastan's dark blue eyes. "There are nearly a hundred people out there. I'm sure that everybody will just assume that they weren't lucky enough to run into us in the crowd. Anyway, I have it on good authority that Roddy's about to break out the booze."

It was all too easy to give in then, and Sirius allowed himself to be half pulled and half pushed until he was perched on the edge of the brewing table, his legs on either side of the Slytherin's narrow hips. He eagerly leaned into the kiss when Rabastan's mouth met his, and a few moments later he had managed to insinuate his hands inside his friend's robes and under his shirt so that he could feel his skin.

He wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, but a crash and the sound of inebriated laughter from the hallway right outside the door broke them up quite abruptly. They could have gone back to what they'd been doing as far as Sirius was concerned, but Rabastan had apparently decided that he'd been irresponsible enough for one night.

"I need to get back out there," he said with a mournful sigh. "I'm actually supposed to be doing my job, believe it or not. You're such a bad influence."

Sirius snorted and pinched a bit of the tight flesh of Rabastan's stomach, which earned him a pinch on the ass in return. Then the Slytherin stepped away and began putting his appearance to rights.

"What job do you mean?" asked Sirius when his brain finally caught up with what was going on around him.

Rabastan rarely told him about Death Eater stuff. He said that he was strictly forbidden from sharing most of it, and anyway he didn't want Sirius to get any more involved than he had to be if he was still determined not to take the Mark. But from what he did share, Sirius couldn't imagine what a party had to do with it. Unless they were planning to torture some of the attendees, or maybe kidnap them to hold for ransom, but either occurrence seemed unlikely.

The Slytherin sighed again and pulled Sirius in for an embrace, seemingly indifferent to the fact that he was re-mussing up the clothes he'd just got finished straightening out.

"It's recruitment," he finally explained. "Most of my duties now revolve around identifying and recruiting young witches and wizards into the fold. New ones, of course. Ones who won't be obligated to join anyway because daddy's a Death Eater. We—that is, Rodolphus, Bellatrix, and I—thought that one way to go about it is to get all of the potentials together and see how they interact with those of us whose loyalty is already known."

Sirius hummed in understanding. Bellatrix's words from earlier, when he'd first arrived, made perfect sense now. Then a terrible thought occurred to him, and although he told himself it was a bad idea to ask and tried to stamp the question back down where it'd come from, he couldn't stop the words from spewing out.

"Will this… will I…" He swallowed heavily, dreading the answer he already knew he would get. "If this is your job, then will it be even worse for you when I don't join?"

Rabastan's whole body tensed and Sirius bit his own lip so hard that he tasted blood. Then one of Rabastan's hands was wrapped around the side of his neck, and his other thumb was gently tugging Sirius's lip from between his teeth and then moving up to stroke along his high, defined cheekbone.

"I don't want you to worry about that. Okay?"

Sirius nodded that he understood. He did understand, even. He just refrained from mentioning that understanding that Rabastan didn't _want_ him to worry about it didn't mean that he _wouldn't_ worry about it.

Rabastan leaned in for another kiss and sucked Sirius's still-bleeding lip into his mouth. It kind of hurt, but it felt too good for Sirius to pull away, and he thought that was like a lot of aspects of their relationship.

When Rabastan finally pulled away on his own, it was to ask, "Will you stay the night?"

Merlin, if he slept over tonight and deprived his mother of any of her final hours with him tomorrow, she would be so furious that she'd probably kill him before he ever had a chance to board the Hogwarts Express for his fifth year. It was a horrible idea. He really shouldn't.

"Yeah, of course," he replied.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** The information about holding a mandrake leaf in one's mouth for a month straight comes from Pottermore. According to the Black family tree that we have available, Sirius is the third such person with the name. However, we only have a small portion of the tree dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, four generations before Sirius, and the "noble and most ancient house" has to go back further than that. I'm taking the liberty of saying that some of these people further back had been named Sirius—after all, they seem to have chosen their preferred family names and given them to babies over and over.

Thank you so much to everyone who followed, favorited, and reviewed the last book. I hope you enjoy the new entry in the series just as much.


	2. September, 1975

**Author's Note:** Well, it finally happened. I am just as shocked that it took this long for me to update as you probably are that you're finally getting a new chapter. Although it may seem like it, I have never intended to abandon this story, which is pretty dear to my heart and usually features at least once daily in my imaginings (e.g., hearing a song and thinking how it sounds like it was written specifically to describe some plot point I know it coming, or a few lines of dialogue or an idea for a scene randomly coming to me on the train so that I have to rush to my office to jot it down before I forget).

At least for now the creative juices are flowing and I have an outline of all of the stories in the series and a really detailed outline of the chapters in this particular story. I also have some time off this month and hope to actually get some writing done.

I hope that this is worth the wait! I have deferred the third section I planned to put in this chapter until the beginning of the next chapter just so I could get something out to you guys as soon as possible!

* * *

Although Sirius had harbored great hopes for his sleepover with Rabastan, things hadn't gone at all to plan. There had been party guests stumbling around and snogging in corners and trying to talk to their host until the wee hours of the morning. When Sirius and Rabastan had finally been able to get away and go upstairs, they had apparently fallen asleep almost as soon as they'd hit the mattress. Sirius had vague, fuzzy memories of Rab's mouth on his and the feeling of the older boy's bare skin under his hands, but his trousers were still firmly on and twisted uncomfortably around his legs from sleep, so he doubted that they'd gotten up to anything really interesting.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty," said Rabastan as he stepped out of the bathroom. He let his fingers trail across the bottom of Sirius's sock-clad foot as he crossed in front of the bed towards his wardrobe. "I can tell you're awake."

Sirius felt like something had died in his mouth and its brother was stomping around between his ears, but he reluctantly cracked open one of his eyes and lowered the self-cooling sheet just enough that he could peer over the edge. The hot late summer air immediately assaulted him, but it was worth it. Rabastan's towel was hanging low and precarious on his hips, and water was still dripping from his hair and onto his broad shoulders.

Sirius rolled over and pulled the sheet down further so he could get a better look at the other boy bending over to step into his trousers.

Rabastan shot him an amused grin as he stood straight and began shrugging a shirt up his arms. "It's nearly two o'clock, you know."

"Bugger!"

Sirius was startled into sitting upright. His mother was definitely going to skin him alive.

Rabastan looked up from buttoning his shirt, mouth already open to respond. Whatever he had been about to say was lost behind a startled laugh.

"I can't believe your mother lets you leave the house with that hair."

Sirius's hand flew to his hair, which he could feel was flattened to one side of his head and sticking nearly straight out on the other side. He ran his fingers through it as gently as he could.

"Well," he informed the other boy, mimicking Walburga's high voice, "Sirius has to be allowed his little rebellions."

There was no way Rabastan could have suppressed his grin, the special one that he reserved only for Sirius. He stepped up to the foot of the bed and used one large hand around Sirius's ankle to tug him forward. Sirius's body slid easily along the silk sheets until he was close enough to wrap his hands around Rabastan's biceps, and Rabastan's hand came up to Sirius's hair. Sirius grimaced as the other boy's fingers got caught in one of the remaining tangles, and Rabastan winced back in sympathy.

"I love this particular rebellion," he said and pressed a kiss of apology to the side of Sirius's head, "but don't you think that being sorted into Gryffindor and having secret lessons with your ex-dueling instructor and maybe kissing a man and sleeping in his bed are rebellions enough for your family to handle?"

Sirius barked out a laugh. "I'm sure it would be more than enough if my family knew about any of it, especially you."

They sought each other's mouths and pressed their lips together for a lazy kiss, then another. But when Sirius let his hands trail over Rabastan's shoulders to his chest and swept his tongue across Rabastan's plump lower lip, the former Slytherin pulled back.

"You have to go," he told Sirius firmly, if reluctantly. "You should've gone home last night."

"I won't see you for months. I, I…" Sirius trailed off uncertainly for a moment before steeling his resolve and drawing on the courage he'd been assured many times over that he was supposed to have as a Gryffindor. "I thought we'd do more than snog before I went back to school."

A groan escaped from somewhere in Rabastan's chest. "I'm not going to shag you when we've only got a few minutes."

Sirius frowned and pinched Rabastan's side until he hissed and tried to jerk away.

"Maybe you should have done it last night."

"I wasn't going to fuck you while you were too drunk to walk up the stairs by yourself!" exclaimed Rabastan. An indignant frown curled down the sides of his mouth, and that expression made Sirius's blood boil more than anything else.

"You've been making up excuses all summer!" Sirius wrenched himself from the other boy's grasp and scrambled off the bed to put more space between them. "I'm beginning to think that you just don't want me!"

Sirius had already found his shirt and shoved his arms into the sleeves by the time Rabastan got his wits about him and caught him by the wrist to keep him from leaving the room.

"I want to. I want _you_ ," he told Sirius, his voice low and urgent and full of his fear that Sirius would really leave. "It's been torture being around you all summer. But you can still… I'm not…" He let out a frustrated sigh. "Look, it's one thing for you to kiss me, but if you have sex with me then there's no deciding that you want to take it back."

Sirius whipped around to glare at him. "Why would I want to take it back?"

Rabastan met Sirius's eyes only briefly before looking down and away.

"You are going to grow up and marry some pure-blood girl—preferably not my sister—and have pure-blood babies and take your place in the Wizengamot some day. You're not going to be like me and get all but disowned."

"But—" began Sirius, but Rabastan cut him off.

"Let me finish! Maybe you can have everything you're supposed to have and fuck me on the side, and maybe that would make you happy. Or maybe you would be miserable sneaking around with me. But you're fifteen bloody years old, and nobody can expect you to know now what will make you happy then. And, and I want you, but I, I can't... Sirius, I don't know that I can…" he trailed off miserably and ran a large hand over his face.

It was overwhelming. Sirius had never given any real, serious thought to their future. He was suddenly, acutely aware of the difference between being fifteen and being nineteen. And Rabastan hadn't said anything about how much this was bothering him! He was like a damned starfish, happily sacrificing bits and pieces of himself all along as a defense mechanism against greater injuries, and that made Sirius somehow even angrier.

"You…" Sirius licked his lips and swallowed to try to alleviate the lump that had lodged itself in his throat. "You knew all of this before you kissed me the first time."

"Yeah," agreed Rabastan, eyes still downcast.

"Then why?"

Rabastan sighed deeply and ran his hands through his ash-brown hair. "I'm not a good person, Siri."

Sirius tried to suppress his burst of laughter, and it came out as a snort instead.

"I wanted you and you wanted me back, so I kissed you," continued Rabastan, as if Sirius hadn't made a sound. "I should have known better than to do it."

"I didn't want you, not like that at least. I'd never thought of looking at another boy that way until you kissed me," Sirius informed him, then immediately regretted it.

Rabastan stared at him with wide eyes, his expression stricken. He let go of Sirius's wrist as if it had burned him. Sirius snorted again and struck his hand out like a snake to capture Rab's wrist.

"Now I _do_ want you, you enormous idiot. If you wanted to protect me from tasting the forbidden fruit or whatever the hell you're trying to do, then you should have thought about that _before_. Now you don't get to make that decision for me." He inhaled deeply and let out the breath slowly, which calmed him considerably so he could continue. "I don't know what will happen later, but I know that I want you now."

There was utter silence except for their breathing. Sirius let his eyes roam over Rabastan's heavy brow and perfectly average nose, down to the natural pout of his lips and his strong chin and broad, rounded jawline. His inspection was interrupted by Rabastan's mouth stretching into a wry grin that just barely revealed his dimples.

"You're right. I'm just being an asshole."

Sirius wasn't entirely sure that was what he'd meant, much less what he'd said, but he forgot whatever objections he'd been about to voice when Rabastan pulled him closer and leaned down for a kiss. Rabastan smelled of dittany and the soap he always used and something that reminded Sirius of Hogwarts dungeon where he practiced Dark magic, and Rabastan apparently hadn't felt the need to shave that morning because his stubble scratched against Sirius's lips and cheek in a way that he was pretty sure he shouldn't have found as arousing as he did.

Rabastan pulled back from the kiss far too soon.

"You should have been home hours ago."

Sirius scowled and looped an arm around Rabastan's waist, enjoying the feeling of Rabastan's shirt rubbing against his own bare chest.

"I know," he acknowledged reluctantly, "but at this point I'm toast whether I stay another five minutes or another hour."

Rabastan laughed and pressed another quick kiss to his lips. "I'm still not going to shag you when we're pressed for time, but…"

He sealed their mouths together again before Sirius could ask "but what?" Not that Sirius minded, really. He was a bit curious when Rabastan started walking backwards and pulling Sirius along with him, but not enough to do anything about it. He was wildly curious when the larger man spun them around, but by the time he broke his mouth away from Rabastan's to ask what he was up to, Sirius's knees had hit the edge of the mattress and, after a little push, he had toppled over backwards onto it.

He let out an undignified squawk of surprise, which was quickly replaced with amazed silence when Rabastan crawled onto the bed over the top of his legs. Rabastan gave him an inscrutable look and, without further preamble, leaned down and pressed his tongue into Sirius's navel.

Sirius's body jackknifed off the bed almost entirely involuntarily.

"Rab," he said, for lack of any other idea what to say. " _Rab_."

"Hmm," Rabastan hummed in response.

Sirius found himself staring down into sapphire blue eyes as Rabastan licked his way down his stomach, until he settled on a spot near Sirius's hipbone and sucked hard.

It was so unexpected and felt so foreign that it took Sirius a moment to realize that Rabastan's hand was busy working open the fastenings of his trousers. Then it was the only thing Sirius could focus on. He watched in stunned silence as Rabastan undid the last button and, after a sharp tug and an impatient look from the other boy, lifted his hips to allow Rab to tug the material down.

He felt the balmy air against his skin, then a moment later he felt Rabastan's hot, damp breath.

"Ra-Rabastan," he repeated. At any other time, he would have been horrified at the crack of his voice. Then Rabastan wrapped his hand firmly around him, and Sirius let his head collapse back onto the mattress and groaned out, "Oh, Merlin…"

"Sirius."

The Slytherin sounded like he'd taken a long flight through rough air. The tone of this voice drew Sirius's attention from where he'd had his head thrown back and his eyes closed. He lifted up enough to stare down the length of his own body. The sight of Rabastan's face inches away from his erection drew another helpless groan from Sirius's throat.

Rabastan smiled knowingly. "This okay, baby?"

Sirius's first thought was _Of course it's okay are you insane stop talking and bloody_ do it _already!_ Somewhere in his mind, though—somewhere beyond the overwhelming throb of arousal and the mild indignation at being called "baby"—he thought it was sweet that Rabastan Lestrange of all (murderously insane) people was making certain he had permission to suck his cock. So he managed to gasp out, "Y-yeah."

The feeling of Rabastan's smooth lips pressing a kiss against his tip was the absolute best thing he had ever felt in his life. For about six seconds, and then the wet heat inside Rabastan's mouth and the rough, broad flat of his tongue was the best thing Sirius had ever experienced, and after that he mercifully stopped thinking coherently enough to keep score. He was torn between throwing his head back again or craning his neck forward so he could get a better view. He didn't know what to do with his hands. They fluttered ineffectively against the sheets and began to reach towards Rabastan, but he wasn't sure if he was supposed to touch and was it always this awkward, sex wasn't supposed to be awkward was it?

There was the most amazing vibration from Rabastan's mouth, which Sirius realized, after several moments, was laughter.

Rabastan took one of Sirius's hands in his own and guided it towards his own head. His hair was still wet. Sirius found that amusing for some reason that he couldn't have articulated if his life had depended on it. At first he ran his fingers through Rabastan's hair and cradled the side of his—Merlin, was Rabastan his lover now?—of his _lover's_ head. But Rabastan moaned and produced another brilliant vibration when Sirius gave an experimental tug, and Sirius took that as permission to weave his fingers through the strands and pull them more enthusiastically.

Maybe he would look back later and be embarrassed that he'd finished so quickly, but in that moment Sirius only felt a sense of deep satisfaction.

When he was finished, he allowed his arched body to relax back against the soft mattress and realized that he had been yanking on Rabastan's hair the entire time. He tried to let go, but the bracelet that Rabastan had given him for his birthday in second year had slithered its way into a fantastic tangle in the damp strands. Fortunately, Rab didn't seem to mind.

Sirius watched in mute fascination as Rabastan used his hand to finish himself off. The older boy released across the fine fabric of Sirius's wrinkled trousers, muffling his hoarse moan in the sweat-dampened crease between Sirius's hip and thigh.

They lay there for several more precious minutes. Sirius stopped trying to disentangle the silver snake from Rabastan's hair in favor of contentedly running his fingertips across the other boy's scalp, and Rabastan wound his heavy arm around Sirius's legs. Finally, and too soon for Sirius's tastes, Rabastan broke the silence.

"I'll come visit you on Hogsmeade weekends if I can."

Sirius's irritation at the ruined moment quickly transformed into glee. He grinned, although Rabastan probably couldn't see it from where his face was half buried in Sirius's stomach.

"I could sneak back down to the village after Filch checks me back in, then spend the night with you and maybe some of the day on Sunday," he thought aloud, his mind swirling with possibilities.

Rabastan heaved himself up with what seemed to take great effort and planted his hand right next to Sirius's head so that he could look him in the eye.

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Siri. I don't know how long I'll be able to get away. Now that all the kiddies are back in school, I'll get sent after bigger game." The question must have been obvious on Sirius's face, because Rab added, "But I promise I'll get at least some time away. I'll miss you."

Sirius was satisfied enough with that to stop pressing for more.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world to lie there and go back to sleep, but Sirius did have to go home eventually. Somehow Rabastan managed to untangle them from each other and get Sirius out of bed and dressed. His clothes were still a disaster even after a handful of charms, but at least they removed the semen.

It seemed that the rest of the house hadn't risen much earlier than the two of them had, because when they went downstairs they found everyone in the dining room eating breakfast foods, some more enthusiastically than others. Sirius wasn't at all surprised to see Bella or Rodolphus, of course (It _was_ their house.), and he wasn't entirely surprised to see Cissy delicately eating a piece of toast with a knife and fork. Evan Rosier seemed just as shocked to see Sirius as Sirius was to see him.

"What're you doing here?" Rosier blurted, then immediately flushed to his roots. "I, I mean, I didn't, uh… know you were here."

"Yes," inserted Bellatrix, shooting Sirius a look that he couldn't immediately decipher, "I didn't know you were here. Aunt Walburga is probably beside herself."

Rabastan scoffed and threw a heavy arm across Sirius's shoulders. "Well, I could hardly have sent him home to his mother in the condition he was in last night, could I? He could barely stand."

Sirius doubted that was an accurate description, but as he couldn't actually remember anything about it, he was hardly in a position to argue.

Bellatrix turned her strange look away from Sirius's face to glare instead at Rabastan's arm around his shoulders. She followed the length of it with her eyes, an expression on her face as if Sirius had decided to drape himself in kelpie entrails or the peeled skin of Mudbloods or something, until finally she was glaring unabashedly at Rabastan's face.

"If I had known that he would be spending the night," she said with carefully measured syllables, "then I would have told Malfoy that he couldn't stay. Then Sirius could have stayed in his own room."

Narcissa did not raise her eyes from her plate. Sirius watched Rodolphus and Rabastan share a look across the table and then quickly avert their eyes. Everybody knew good and well that Lucius hadn't stayed in his room the night before, even if propriety demanded that he be given his own bed and that everybody pretend like they didn't know he hadn't slept in it.

"Well, no matter now," Bellatrix continued into the awkward silence. "Come on, Sirius, you had better get home before Aunt Walburga comes to retrieve you herself. I, for one, don't want to face her."

"Maybe you should let him eat first," snapped Rabastan.

He earned himself a quelling look from his brother and an intensely curious look from Rosier, who had been watching the proceedings from beneath his long bangs. Sirius opened his mouth to confirm that he was, in fact, hungry, but Bellatrix cut him off.

"Nonsense," she said in a melodic, conciliatory tone that would have lulled only an utter moron or someone who had never met her before. "I'm sure that my aunt has prepared all sorts of things for the boys' last day at home."

Bellatrix had been doing her level best all summer to prevent Sirius and Rabastan from being alone together, and it had been really beginning to irritate Sirius long before that moment. On this occasion, she seemed determined to make up for her lack of oversight the night before by separating them now. Sirius would have told her to bugger off, but by now Rosier had come out from behind his hair and was watching the proceedings with open curiosity, so Sirius was forced to press formal kisses to his cousins' cheeks and receive nothing more than a hearty slap on the back and a meaningful look from Rabastan before he was driven towards the Floo.

As Bellatrix pushed him into the front drawing room and closed the door behind them, Sirius heard the thud of heavy boots across the small marble entry hall followed by a loud _crack_ , and he knew that Rabastan must have Apparated away. He must have been just as angry as Sirius to have made so much noise, since normally he was quite good at Apparition.

"Siri…" began Bellatrix, still using the same saccharine tone as before.

He was having none of it.

"You had no right to do that!" he barked and spun to face her, eyes thunderous.

His cousin looked taken aback but was undeterred. "I had every right! You're under my roof! Whatever he's talked you into doing—"

"He hasn't talked me into anything, you psycho!" cried Sirius. "And even if he had, it isn't any of your business what I do behind closed doors!"

"You can't just—!"

"Not. Your. Business," he gritted out through clenched teeth.

Whether it was the look on his face or the tone of his voice, something seemed to bring Bellatrix up short. She considered him for long moments as he stood tall and furious across from her, then she reached out a cautious hand towards him.

"Now, Siri, I know that you're a bit perturbed, but you have to know that I only want what's best for you. For the family."

" _Perturbed_?" he echoed disbelievingly and batted her hand away. "Yeah, I'm plenty perturbed."

He didn't feel like he could say more without saying too much. With one last hard glare, he turned toward the fireplace and threw in a pinch of Floo powder with sharp, economical movements. Bellatrix was still calling his name when he began spinning past the grates.

The rest of the day didn't go much better. The first person he'd run into at Grimmauld Place had been Grandfather Arcturus. The old man had taken in his rumpled clothes and unrepentant attitude and looked to be on the verge of offering criticism thinly veiled as sage advice. Fortunately, he'd seemed to realize from Sirius's expression that his grandson was likely to turn on his heel and march right back to the Floo if he did.

Sirius thought that if the other members of the Wizengamot had known that all one had to do to make Arcturus Black shut up was to murder someone in cold blood in his upstairs drawing room, they probably would have queued around the block.

He did not get the same response from his mother, who upon seeing him (freshly washed and pressed) declared with a delicate sniff, "I see how it is. Your little friends merit more respect than your own mother."

"I'm sorry, Mother," he told her dutifully and not exactly insincerely.

"Your brother managed to come home at a perfectly reasonable time last night and have breakfast with me this morning," she went on. "I have no idea what you could possibly have been doing that was more important."

It took a lot of effort for Sirius to maintain a neutral expression, but he really did not feel up to anymore confrontations so he managed to sit there and let her talk without giving anything away of what he'd been up to. He'd gone from angry to orgasmic to angry in such quick succession that now all he felt was emotionally drained. And he'd been feeling so good too—not even just about getting blown to within an inch of his life, which had been fantastic of course, but also about the quiet moments afterward and the promise Rabastan had made about seeing each other during the school year.

 _Only half a day_ , he thought to himself, _and then I'll be on the way to Hogwarts_. His mother would forgive him once she'd had a bit of separation. And at Hogwarts he wouldn't have to deal with his entire family interfering with his personal life. The relative privacy might almost make up for the weeks he'd have to go without seeing Rabastan.

* * *

Sirius and his friends hadn't had to fight for a private compartment on the Hogwarts Express in years. The older students hadn't wanted to risk their retribution by making them leave a compartment they'd already claimed, and now, as fifth years, they were the ones ejecting ickle firsties out of the way.

James opened the compartment door with a bang, not bothering to knock. The kids inside all spun towards the door with startled expressions.

"Scram," James ordered them, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

One of the first years, a baby-faced boy who looked like he hadn't missed a meal in his life, bravely stood to face them. "We don't have to leave! We were here first!"

"Hey, kid, we gave you a chance to go quietly," said Sirius as he dropped his wand out of its arm holster.

He lifted the wand briefly to the boy's eye level, pausing for a moment to watch his eyes go wide and his ruddy cheeks drain to white, then Sirius pointed it up at the overhead bin. At his direction, the trunks zoomed off the rack and over his and his friends' heads, took a sharp left out the door, and took off down the corridor, dodging other students and bouncing off the walls as they went.

The compartment erupted into chaos at that. Between the kids' exclamations and James and Peter's laughter, Sirius almost didn't notice Remus arrive with Lily Evans in tow.

Remus took in the scene and turned to Sirius with an aggrieved sigh. "I guess this is about the trunks that nearly hit us in the corridor?"

Sirius shrugged and tucked his wand back into the holster strapped to his forearm. "Yeah."

"The train hasn't even left the station yet!" exclaimed Evans. She stood straighter so that Sirius couldn't help but see the scarlet badge pinned to her chest. "I can't believe you're already bullying people! I ought to take points or, or give you detention!"

She turned to Remus for support, but if she expected him to say anything then she was disappointed. He looked uncomfortably between his friends and Evans and opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. Sirius noticed that he wasn't wearing his prefect badge yet.

It was a close thing, but Sirius managed not to roll his eyes at the whole thing.

"Ah, stuff it, Evans. Like you said, we haven't left the station. We're not on Hogwarts time yet."

"That just means you're not allowed to do underage magic!" she insisted.

Sirius barked out a laugh. "How about you arrest me?"

James herded the first years out of the compartment then. His laugh settled into an anticipatory grin when he caught sight of Lily. "Ah, Evans, here you are!" he said in a tone of voice that had Sirius and Peter looking at him in pitying amusement and Remus rolling his eyes heavenward. "Did you have a good summer? You're looking especially lovely this year."

"Potter." Her eyes flashed and her expression hardened. "You're looking especially boorish this year." She turned to the first years then, before James could respond, and said in a much sweeter voice, "Come on. I'll help you find your things."

She set off down the corridor with a line of eleven year olds trailing after her like a row of ducklings. That wasn't nearly as comical as the look on James's face. He stared at her retreating back for a moment, then turned his gobsmacked expression towards Sirius as if to ask _Did that really just happen?_

"You know, that's really unnecessary," Peter pointed out, for lack of anyone coming up with anything better to say. "As long as their luggage is on the train, the house-elves will take it up to the school."

Sirius managed not to point out that Mudbloods weren't known for thinking through problems like proper witches and wizards would.

Remus turned a disgusted look on them. "What was really unnecessary was that you lot did that in the first place."

"Oh Merlin, are we going to have to put up with this sanctimonious prefect bullshit all year?" groaned James.

"For the next three years, mate," replied Sirius, "and Merlin help us if he makes head boy."

On this ocassion, even James didn't seem to think anything was suspicious about Peter's hateful glare in Remus's direction. (Sirius made a mental note that he was going to have to warn Peter _again_ to not be so obvious about disliking his supposed friend.) In the face of all of his friends' hostility, Remus's shoulders drooped slightly, although by the time they had all settled into the purloined compartment he had regained some of his confidence and a good deal of indignation for good measure.

"You know," he spoke over James's attempt to explain a new, improbable Chaser formation he had dreamt up in the few days since he had last seen Sirius, "even if you still don't care about keeping your noses clean, you should at least consider that we have OWLs this year, and you'll need to take classes more seriously if you expect to do as well on them as on Hogwarts exams."

He seemed like he would have gone on, but he was drowned out by the collective groan of his friends.

Sirius kicked Remus's foot so that he had to scramble to catch the thick, fragile-looking book he had been balancing on his leg. He returned his friend's glare with an unrepentant smirk.

"We're going to have to spend all year pretending to care about the fucking OWLs when the professors talk about them, so if you please, Master Prefect, I'd much rather pretend to care about James's daft idea."

"If you're lucky," put in Peter, a grin lighting his full cheeks, "maybe you'll fall off your broom and break your neck before the exams."

Sirius laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Good man! Always seeing the silver lining!"

James seemed willing enough to laugh at this criticism of his Quidditch captaining skills, but he couldn't let it go without initiating a minor wrestling match in the middle of the compartment. For his part, Remus's prefect badge seemed to have sapped him of his good humor. He gathered up his books and edged his way around James and Sirius, claiming that he wanted to get to the prefects' compartment early before the meeting started.

Things improved marginally in the following weeks, with Remus seeming to decide that he'd rather turn a blind eye to his friends' antics than risk losing their friendship. Sirius rather doubted that James would actually abandon one of his friends over so little a thing as getting a prefect badge and developing a stick up his bum, but James didn't seem to realize that Remus was so insecure and Sirius found the situation too useful to try to fix it.

Classes were more interesting than ever. However, there were also more assignments than ever, and the professors seemed convinced that there was no way they would ever have enough time to properly cover everything that would be on the OWLs. Sirius, who had been bored out of his skull for most of his lessons in earlier years, thought that maybe they should have started teaching the good stuff earlier instead of catering to the idiots who wouldn't have been able to keep up.

A lot of the fifth years were already walking around with shell-shocked expressions on their faces, and although Sirius himself hadn't ventured to the library yet that year, Remus said that most of their classmates seemed to be getting a head start on revising. Others had begun dropping electives. Sirius thought that was a stupid move, as he doubted that the panic about OWLs would last once the initial shock wore off.

"I think I'm going to drop Ancient Runes," announced Janice a few weeks into the term.

Sirius gave up squinting at the tiny handwritten text in his Charms book and looked over at her in surprise. The mildly warm summer was well into giving way to the cold of fall, and half of Janice's honey curls were clinging to her sweater while the other half blew freely in the wind coming in through the open windows of the clock tower.

"Why?" he settled on asking, rather than commenting on how silly he thought the whole idea of dropping electives was.

She sighed and closed her Transfiguration textbook with a snap, leaving her half-done essay sticking out from between the pages. "I've decided that I want to become a Healer. I spoke to Professor Flitwick about it last week, and he says that I don't need Ancient Runes for that."

"You've been thinking about it for a while," was all he could think to say.

"Yes." Janice smiled knowingly at him and scooted closer until they were pressed together from shoulder to knee. "I know your opinion about it, but I think that I will be loads better off if I focus on doing really well in the subjects I actually need."

Maybe other people would have been abashed at that little scold, but Sirius had been carefully cultivating his innate shamelessness for years and didn't even bat an eyelash. Instead, he pointed out, "You're a Ravenclaw."

She laughed and bumped his shoulder with hers. "That only means I don't mind having to study as much as I do to earn my grades."

"You could've fooled me," joked Sirius. "I remember spending hours in the library wondering if you ever did any homework at all."

They were long past the days when they felt the need to pretend that they needed some excuse to spend time together besides just wanting to make out. And funnily enough, now that they weren't shy about snogging whenever the mood struck them, they also spent a lot more time actually studying together. Sirius was sure that he would be required to look over her Transfiguration essay before she would declare it officially done.

She shifted onto her knees facing him and wrapped her small hand around the side of his neck, smiling. "My method worked, didn't it?"

From her kneeling position she was several inches taller than Sirius, who was slouching back against the wall, and the angle of their kiss reminded Sirius uncomfortably of kissing Rabastan. The comparison wasn't particularly favorable towards Janice, whose smooth skin and soft kisses didn't turn him on nearly as much as they used to do. They especially did not turn him on as much as Rabastan's stubble and the demanding press of his tongue. But Rabastan insisted that he needed to be known to date girls in order to deflect anyone from suspecting that he was interested in men, particularly since the nature of Rabastan's exile from his family was a not-very-well-kept secret and they were known to spend time together.

Sirius had grown to like Janice, and he didn't really want to answer anyone's (particularly her) questions about why he'd broken up with her or deal with finding another girl, so she was really the perfect unsuspecting candidate. That didn't make it any less discomfiting for him to go on acting as if everything was the same no matter how much things kept changing.

He was startled by the press of her hand against his bare skin and went still for a few moments as he processed that she had undone some of the buttons of his shirt while he'd been distracted. She seemed to take his hesitation as a good sign, if he were to judge by the smile he felt against his own lips and the way she insinuated her hand more firmly inside his shirt until he could feel the cool gold of the bracelet he'd given her a few days prior for her sixteenth birthday tickling along his chest.

This was a new development. One that he didn't really know how to handle. She seemed perfectly content when he slid his hand under her shirt to explore her trim waist and the dip of her lower back, but Sirius knew full well that hands beneath clothes soon led to touching more intimate parts and then to removing the clothes and then to… Well, his stomach clenched painfully and he just wasn't sure whether he would be able to take it that far with her when he knew that he was using her.

For the moment, he tried to block out any other thoughts and focus on the here and now.


	3. Fall, 1975

The Gryffindors didn't get to hold Quidditch tryouts until near the end of September. James hadn't lightened up about the game in any of the years since Sirius had met him (if anything, he had grown even more obsessed), so he was particularly frantic about the delay. Remus pointed out more than once that it had been James's own fault that he'd received two successive weeks of detention before the second week of school was complete, but that had only made the Quidditch captain several shades more insufferable.

Sirius didn't see what the big deal was since the entire Gryffindor team had been having regular summer practices; sure, the rest of them hadn't been at every practice like James had, but they were certainly much better prepared than any of the other teams who hadn't practiced at all. In addition, their entire team from the previous year had returned to Hogwarts except for the Keeper and one Beater, so they were in good shape. Of course, it wouldn't have done anyone any good to argue the point with James Potter, so Sirius had kept his mouth shut and dutifully trailed after his friend at too-early-o'clock in the morning on the wet, cold Saturday morning he had chosen for the trials.

There were about a dozen people waiting on the pitch, which Sirius thought was a good turnout for only two open positions. There were the usual second and third years who always showed up at tryouts, but Sirius thought that they all looked rather too small to be any good at the Beater or Keeper positions. There were also a few promising prospects, but Sirius was surprised to see Emmeline Vance.

"What are you all doing standing around?" demanded James. "Why aren't you warming up?"

The hopefuls looked around at the current team members and at each other for guidance, but none of them dared speak. James planted his broom firmly against the soft ground and put his free hand on his hip in a way that was so reminiscent of his mother that Sirius had to bite back a grin.

"Well? What are you waiting for?"

There was a scramble to mount broomsticks and get in the air. Although some managed it admirably, a few of them were noticeably shaky. One particularly large fourth year tripped over his own two feet before he even managed to get on his broom. He hefted himself out of the mud and, with a bashful grin in their direction, slung his leg over his Cleansweep and cleanly took off.

James turned to give his team an exasperated look. "Well, what are you lot waiting for?"

He pushed into the air before any of them could answer, not that any of them would have bothered.

"He's in fine form today," commented Greg Towler, the remaining Beater. He was the younger brother of Amanda Towler, the ape-like girl who had been Gryffindor's Seeker before James. Greg wasn't any better looking than his sister, but fortunately he was more talented at Quidditch than his sister had ever hoped to be.

Sirius's fellow Chasers grumbled agreements to Towler's assessment, and Sirius internally sighed. James had a brilliant mind for Quidditch and, inasmuch as McGonagall cared about Gryffindor actually improving rather than recycling the same plays and tactics they'd been using since before _she'd_ been on the team, he'd been the perfect choice for captain. Well, that and Sirius had outright refused the honor of co-captain when she'd asked, because he honestly thought James might have never spoken to him again. But James wasn't exactly the most inspirational of captains—in fact, he was a right git most of the time, and it often fell to Sirius to smooth ruffled feathers.

"He's just upset that we've lost two weeks of practice time," said Sirius as they all mounted their brooms, to immediate eye rolls from his teammates. "I know, I know. It's his fault we have, and we don't need the practice anyway—"

"Because we've been practicing our asses off all bleeding summer!" inserted Arthur Midgen, who was absently picking at one of his pimples.

"Yes, thank you, Midgen," Sirius replied as politely as he could manage, which wasn't very much at all. "I'll talk to James, but we all want to win when it comes down to it."

There was very little else to say about it, so Sirius tossed the Quaffle to the third Chaser and they all shot into the air to get started. Tryouts proceeded as usual. They ran through a series of Quidditch drills, then Sirius and his fellow Chasers took turns throwing Quaffles at the prospective Keepers, who each had a chance to defend the hoops, while Towler lobbed Bludgers back and forth with the prospective Beaters.

The clumsy boy from earlier turned out to be quite agile in the air, to everybody's surprise. A seventh-year boy was a better Beater, but Sirius figured that James would make the fourth year reserve Beater so that he'd be rather good by next year (and still with two more years of James's Quidditch captaincy to go, as it happened).

The contest to become Gryffindor's next Keeper wasn't even a close thing.

"I'm miles ahead of anyone else," Vance told him suddenly as they were hovering near each other watching a third-year girl miss nearly all the Quaffles Midgen threw in her direction.

Sirius turned towards her but didn't let his surprise show on his face. "Grown conceited, have we?"

"It's the truth," she replied.

"Yes, Vance, I have eyes." He motioned with one hand in the general direction of the poor girl currently trying to defend the hoops, who looked to be near tears. "What I don't know is why you feel the need to tell me."

Emmeline hadn't spoken more than two words together to him since the incident on the Hogwarts Express during their first year, and those two words were usually some variation on "Get bent." Not that Sirius could regret the end of their friendship over much. That had been the start of his friendship with Rabastan, and anyway Mary Macdonald's father was only a Muggle, so who cared if Sirius had laughed at Rabastan's treatment of him?

Vance didn't appear to want to talk to him now, but she plowed on regardless. "I wanted to know whether I have any shot at actually making the team."

"Why wouldn't you?"

He was genuinely flummoxed for a moment, but Vance's pointed glare in his direction made him realize her meaning soon enough.

"Because you'll tell Potter you don't mind?" she asked dubiously.

"No, you twit, because you're the best. James wouldn't care even if I did mind." He couldn't help but laugh at the thought. "Not that your presence affects me in the least. Maybe _you_ just spend too much time thinking about _me_."

Her horrified look quickly morphed into outrage, but before she could formulate a response Sirius had already darted off to relieve Midgen of the Quaffle.

In the end, things went just as Sirius had predicted: The seventh year was made Beater, the fourth year reserve Beater, and Vance the Keeper. James didn't seem to have spared a thought for how Sirius may feel about having his friend-turned-foe on the team, although he realized that maybe he should have asked after Peter pointed it out to him. Sirius really didn't care and wouldn't have expected James to put his feelings ahead of the team even if he had minded, but he appreciated Peter's stalwart support nonetheless.

It turned out to be a good thing that they'd had Quidditch practices so often during the summer (besides just that it had been a convenient cover for Sirius's other activities), because the professors hadn't been exaggerating when they had said that fifth year would be more difficult than any of their previous years at Hogwarts. Between schoolwork and Quidditch practice, Sirius barely had time for anything else, and even James had been persuaded to cut back on practice from four times a week to three times a week.

Their Animagus practices also suffered from the onslaught of homework, although they managed to get in some practice whenever Remus was busy with prefect duties or at his study group with Evans.

During the full moon in mid-October, their lack of consistent practice became more evident. The transformations that had become relatively easy for them over the summer were more difficult now. Sirius had to turn his mind back to his knowledge of canine anatomy and focus harder than he'd had to focus since the beginning of summer to make his human limbs twist into dog legs and sprout thick black fur. Peter was having poorer luck, but James seemed to be doing okay, although the practice was exhausting.

Perhaps they should have stopped while they were ahead, but Sirius insisted that they could each go just one more round before retiring for the night, since they wouldn't have another chance to practice as much until the next full moon.

He felt more than a little guilty, then, when James looked up at him with panicked hazel eyes and declared, "I can't change it back."

Sirius stared at him for the space of several heartbeats.

"What do you mean you can't change it back?"

"I've been trying to change it back the usual way, you know, but, but I just... can't." He shrugged helplessly, trying now to present an air of calm. Sirius wasn't sure whether that was pure bravado or just a pure-blood wizard's assumption that if magic could get him into something then it could get him out of it, too. "I think I've only managed to thin out the fur a bit."

Sirius moved in front of him and leaned forward to get a better look. He couldn't see anything obviously wrong; it looked like how he thought a stag's shin and foot were supposed to look.

Although he didn't really want to say it, Sirius had to point out, "It would be really dangerous for me to mess around with this, James. This is really advanced magic. I'd probably just make it worse."

"You have to try," insisted James. "If we go to McGonagall, then she's going to know that we've been practicing to become Animagi."

"We don't have to tell her why, and I'm sure we can convince her that we were going off half-drawn and don't know about the mandrake leaves or anything." Sirius suggested half-heartedly, but they both knew that McGonagall wasn't an idiot.

James still insisted that he try, so Sirius aimed his wand and carefully visualized turning James's leg from a deer leg back to a human leg, using the techniques he had learned from the books they'd been studying since third year. When he cast the spell, James cried out in pain and collapsed back against his mattress.

Sirius, horrified at his friend's reaction, stopped immediately. "Merlin, James!"

Peter, who had been remarkably silent the entire time, roused himself from the end of his own bed and stuck his head out of their dormitory door to check if anyone was coming to investigate the noise.

"No, no, you have to try again." James took a breath and threw his arm across his eyes. "I could feel it shifting, so it was working. You can just silence me."

"Absolutely not!"

"Sirius!"

"No, James! Just no!" He waved a hand to forestall his friend's next protest. They could hear Peter assuring someone just outside the door that there was nothing to worry about, that it was just a prank gone wrong. Sirius took a deep breath. "Maybe… Maybe it will just go back to normal if we leave it overnight. Botched transfigurations usually lose their transfigured forms after a few hours."

James lowered his arm to pin Sirius with an unimpressed glare. "Maybe it will go back? What if it doesn't?"

"Then we'll have to go to McGonagall," insisted Sirius.

"Then she'll know!" cried James.

"I don't see that we have another choice!"

By now Peter had sent any concerned onlookers back to bed and had come over to look at James's leg from around Sirius's shoulder. "I can't get in trouble," he said worriedly. "I'm trying to get Slughorn to let me do a special Potions project. If I get caught up in this he'll never say yes."

Sirius privately thought that it was better all around if Peter weren't involved anyway. McGonagall might believe that Sirius and James had been messing around with human transfigurations on a lark, but it was stretching the imagination to think that such a poor Transfigurations student as Peter would try something so advanced for no good reason. Aloud he said, "That's okay, Peter. We know how important the project is to you."

A well placed glare at James convinced him to agree.

The next morning, it was immediately apparent that James's problem hadn't gone away overnight. He told them from between a crack in his bed hangings that he wasn't well and that they had all better go on without him. Anyway, they didn't have Transfiguration on Thursdays, and none of the other professors were likely to give him too hard a time.

"Whether they're nice about you skipping class is hardly the point, if you aren't really sick," said Remus, who looked as if he were moments away from producing a thermometer and verifying James's story for himself.

He was looking awful in his own right, and Sirius wondered at Pomfrey having released him from the infirmary so soon. It was just plain back luck for the rest of them.

"I am!" James protested. "I think I caught a chill in Astronomy last night!"

He sounded more annoyed than sick. Peter was standing by the door impatiently, completely unconcerned for his friend and clearly eager to head down for breakfast before the choice selections were gone. (To be fair, the raspberry jam did tend to clear out pretty quickly.) Remus, on the other hand, crossed his arms across his chest and glared, as if he had more to say.

Sirius stepped between James and Remus and gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes. "What's it matter if he's faking? It's his problem if he wants to make up the work."

James gave him a grateful look after Remus turned away with a roll of his own eyes.

They had double Astronomy with the Hufflepuffs that morning. Sirius didn't mind having the practical on Wednesday night and the lecture on Thursday morning, but according to his classmates it was something akin to torture. They had History of Magic after the morning break, though fortunately for only a single period. Professor Bins had been droning on about the same giant wars since at least March of the previous school year, so really if James had to pick a class to miss he'd picked a good one.

Sirius had a free period after lunch, but Remus and Peter (and James, if he hadn't been in bed) had Muggle Studies. Sirius didn't understand it, but Peter said that since his family were Muggles that the class would be an easy OWL without much effort on his part. He had never dared ask why Remus and James had decided to take the class, as he hadn't wanted to draw any undue suspicion to himself.

Sirius usually spent his free period either doing his homework or sneaking down to the dungeons to practice the Dark Arts. Today, though, he trudged back up the moving staircases towards Gryffindor Tower. Most people were either still in the Great Hall or making their way to class, so he didn't pass anyone in the corridors and only had to offer a friendly nod to two seventh years who were working on something in the common room.

James was still reluctant to go to McGonagall, but Sirius had come up with a better cover story and anyway his friend didn't have much choice except to trust him.

Sirius went down the stairs first and paused just inside the portrait hole to make small talk with the two girls in the common room so that James could slip out of the open portrait under his invisibility cloak. He didn't want anyone to see him in such a state, after all. They had timed it so that all of the other students would already be in class or wherever else they were heading after lunch, so they didn't meet anyone else in the hallways and James was able to remove his cloak and shove it into his pocket before they knocked on the door to Professor McGonagall's office.

She took one look at James's leg and exclaimed, "Mr. Potter, what have you done?"

Sirius supposed that he couldn't really expect McGonagall to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that someone had done it to James, after all the trouble they'd been in, but it still would've been nice if she had.

"We were just reading ahead, professor," began James. He had put on a mask of obviously fake contriteness, in keeping with how he usually acted when caught doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing.

He didn't get any further, because McGonagall's nostrils flared alarmingly and she snapped, "Get in here, Potter! Black!"

They followed her meekly as she stalked back into her office and came to a stop next to her large desk, arms crossed and wand tapping against her shoulder.

"Of all the foolish things you've done…" she started, then stopped, seemingly at a loss for how to describe their stupidity. She pursed her lips violently. "What, precisely, did you hope to accomplish?"

"We were just… It was just…" floundered James.

Then, just as they had planned, Sirius butted in with, "We were planning a prank, professor. Turn unsuspecting people into animals for a few minutes, you know? We thought it'd be funny."

"A prank?" she repeated shrilly. "I suppose we're lucky that you decided to test this harebrained scheme on yourselves before exposing your schoolmates to your humor!"

James and Sirius wisely remained silent as she examined James's leg and tapped it several times with her wand, muttering to herself all the while about reckless hoodlums and idiotic pranks. All told, it took her less than a minute to set James to rights.

"Er… thanks, professor," James said quietly, eyeing the office door with no subtlety at all.

Professor McGonagall stood straight and stern, glaring at them both.

"Mr. Potter, Mr. Black, I must impress upon you the seriousness of attempting magic that you do not understand. There is a good reason why human to animal transfigurations are not covered until seventh year, and the only students who cover the subject with any depth are those who show exceptional aptitude in Transfiguration and are approved for special projects. Although you are both good students, I can assure you that neither of you is prepared for that."

Sirius saw out of the corner of his eye that James was looking at him, and he couldn't help but glance back.

That was enough for McGonagall. She gaped at them for a few moments before she managed to ask, "Have you done this before?"

James shot Sirius a slightly panicked look, as this had not been part of their plan. Sirius tried to project cool confidence. Their Head of House seemed to come to her own conclusions based on their interactions.

"Mr. Black, am I to understand that you have successfully completed human to animal transfigurations?"

Sirius curled his tongue up against the roof of his mouth in irritation, but outwardly he remained collected. "Yes, Professor McGonagall."

"How far have you gotten?" she asked, clearly taken aback.

"Nothing much." He shrugged. "A few things. I turned my hand into a paw."

Her eyebrows had risen and her lips had thinned with each subsequent answer. She was clearly flummoxed, and if Sirius thought that she would be impressed by his prowess, he was mistaken. He endured a lecture of some duration on the dangers of unsupervised human transfigurations (She used James as an example of what could go wrong, but for the most part his friend was able to sit quietly and unnoticed.), and in the end she forced Sirius to promise that he would never try again until he was older and had the proper guidance.

Only when they were leaving did she remember why they had supposedly been engaged in such dangerous activities.

"I suppose I can't punish you for only planning a prank that you never carried out," she told them, which was just as Sirius had hoped it would be when he'd suggested that they ought to tell her that was what they'd been doing, "and strictly speaking, there aren't any rules against moving ahead in the curriculum or practicing advanced magic, no matter how foolhardy it may be. Do not mistake my decision for leniency; if I catch either of you practicing human transfigurations after I have expressly told you to stop, I will have you in detention until you graduate."

"Yes, professor," they both responded dutifully.

She narrowed her eyes at them again. "Do try to stay out of trouble. There's only so much I can do if you insist on earning detentions, and I want the Quidditch Cup in my office where it belongs."

* * *

By the week following James's transfiguration accident, Sirius was nearly crawling out of his skin. He hadn't had a chance to steal down to the dungeons between spending time with his friends, his increased workload, Quidditch practice, Animagus practice, and fitting in some time with his girlfriend, so he hadn't practiced dueling or Dark magic in ages. After a full summer of practicing nearly every day, Sirius found that now he could barely go half a week before he got itchy and felt like his skin was too tight.

He had taken to performing mild to middling hexes on anyone who annoyed him and some innocent people in the corridors who hadn't done anything to him at all, just to take the edge off, but it didn't work particularly well. It did earn him the ire of Evans and Vance, and the impotent exasperation of Remus, but the girls had never managed to catch him in the act and Remus wouldn't write up his own friend.

This particular Saturday he was feeling especially on edge, because their first Hogsmeade weekend was only a week away and he still hadn't received a single letter from Rabastan. He'd have understood (though he'd have been mightily disappointed) if his friend hadn't been able to get time away to come to Hogsmeade, but Rabastan hadn't even owled to let him know. He hadn't seen fit to send anything!

When Aquila had returned that morning with only a letter from Bellatrix, Sirius could have sworn she'd given him a pitying look, and then she had made a point to perch on his shoulder and preen his hair for upwards of a quarter hour. If even his owl had taken to trying to make him feel better, then the situation must be as bad as he thought.

He spent the rest of the morning in the common room. He'd normally spend it with Janice, but he wasn't in any frame of mind to pretend to be happy with his girlfriend when he was caught between pining for Rabastan and wanting to hex his bits off. James was forcing the three newest members of the Quidditch team to do extra drills with him, as they hadn't had the benefit of summer practices, so he missed Sirius's dismal mood and the explosion when Peter happened to overhear Lily Evans talking to a seventh year boy next to the fireplace.

"YOU WHAT?" Peter shouted, seemingly out of the blue.

Sirius was not the only one who startled at the sudden disruption. Remus had dropped their deck of cards mid-shuffle, and it seemed like everyone in the common room was looking to see what was going on. For her part, Evans took a few moments to realize that Peter had been addressing her, which was understandable given that it was rude of him to have been eavesdropping on her conversation and Sirius couldn't recall him ever having spoken directly to her before.

She blinked her big green eyes at him several times. "I'm meeting with Professor Slughorn on Monday," she said, sounding as if she were asking him rather than telling him.

"About your special project?" demanded Peter, and Sirius understood at once.

Slughorn hadn't approved Peter's project. He had said it was because fifth years weren't prepared for such things, but that was clearly a load of bollocks if he had approved a project for Evans.

"Well, mine and Severus's, yes," replied Evans.

Peter had turned a splendid shade of eggplant.

Remus blessedly chose that moment to announce that he and Evans should leave a bit early for their prefect meeting. Although she still seemed confused by the entire series of events, Evans allowed him to lead her out of the tower, only turning one baffled backwards glance to Peter before they disappeared through the portrait hole. Sirius figured that Remus would fill the girl in once he got her out of Peter's earshot.

As for Sirius and Peter, no words were necessary between them. They rose almost as one and, ignoring the lingering stares of their housemates, gathered their scattered belongings and headed for the dungeons.

Sirius could practically feel the rage pouring off of his friend as they made their way down from the seventh floor, which was surprising coming from Peter. They'd barely closed the door to the abandoned classroom before he whipped out his wand and sent a Blasting Curse at one of the many chairs that they had long since shoved against the walls.

"I can't believe that, that…" he trailed off, panting as if he'd just run some of the excruciating laps James forced the team to take around the Quidditch pitch and greenhouses.

Sirius placed an awkward hand on his friend's shoulder, but Peter only tensed more so he quickly dropped his hand back down to his side.

There wasn't much he could do besides point out that Slughorn was a windbag who was better at sucking up to more important people than he would ever be at potions. Not that he hadn't earned the title of potions master or that he wasn't a good teacher, but Peter had looked through the past twenty-odd years of potions journals available in the Hogwarts library and found that Slughorn hadn't published any research and hadn't been cited in anybody else's articles either. He seemed more interested in hanging off the coat tails of his ambitious acquaintances and former students than in having any ambitions based off his own merit. Of course, Peter already knew all of this, and Sirius had been trying to get him over the fact that Slughorn chose favorites (and that Peter wasn't one of them) since first year, so it likely wouldn't have done much good to say it all again.

Instead, he found himself suggesting, "You ought to brew something on your own. Slughorn wouldn't have done anything except let you make your own mistakes anyway."

Sirius didn't know that, as obviously he had never had a special project with Professor Slughorn himself, but it seemed like something he would do. And it sounded like it would mollify Peter.

"M-maybe," hiccuped Peter. "And I couldn't have brewed any Dark potions if he were watching."

"And you'd have been stuck in a spare dungeon with Evans and Snivellus."

"That's true." Peter's brow softened, though he didn't go so far as to smile, and Sirius knew that there was no way his anger could have abated. He turned to survey the empty classroom. "I guess I could set up something more elaborate in here."

Sirius nearly sighed in relief.

"Let me know if there's anything you can't pilfer. After all, your birthday is coming up."

Peter got a gleam in his eye at that, and Sirius mentally deducted the Galleons from his funds to cover the cost of the list he was sure his friend would give him. Although someone like Remus or James would be embarrassed to accept lavish gifts, Peter had no such problem, and Sirius was under no illusions that Peter preferred him over James primarily because James couldn't offer as much. The expenditure was worth it, though, to avoid an ongoing crisis that he would have to put up with for Merlin only knew how long. In any case, his allowance for each term had been increased to 100 Galleons at the start of his fifth year, and he had always saved more funds than he spent since first year, so he could well afford to pay for peace and quiet.

Even with that situation averted and a solid afternoon of Dark magic practice under his belt to calm his nerves, he soon found himself embroiled in more drama. The following Tuesday afternoon during Double Arithmancy, the fifth years were set to begin the project that Professor Farrah had been telling them about since the first class of term. They were meant to partner up, after which the professor would randomly assign each pair a number that they had to use to improve the effects of a spell. Sirius and Janice had naturally assumed that they would be partners, which left Remus and Peter to pair up (James, having decided at the end of second year that he was only going to sign up for the easy classes, had chosen Care of Magical Creatures and Muggle Studies over Arithmancy or Ancient Runes).

However, at the beginning of the lesson Professor Farrah levitated two copper bowls from one of the shelves behind her desk and informed the class, "I have placed slips of parchment with the numbers one through nine in this bowl, and in this one I have placed each of your names. We will pair you up and assign numbers by drawing them randomly."

Groans and whispers erupted across the classroom. Sirius had an immediate, horrifying daydream of what it would be like to get paired with someone like Vance or, Merlin forbid, Snape.

"Now, none of that!" insisted their professor. "Part of my job is to prepare you for life after Hogwarts, where you won't always be able to work with your best friend!"

The students reluctantly emptied their seats and pressed along the sides of the small classroom, and the sorting ceremony began when Professor Farrah dipped her hand into the larger bowl and produced a scrap of parchment with Nigel Mulciber's name on it. The next named belonged to a prettyish sort of girl from Hufflepuff whom Sirius had never spoken to and who looked terrified as she approached the scowling Slytherin boy.

Remus ended up with a boy from Ravenclaw, and Peter didn't bother to hide his groan of dismay when his name was called after Emmeline Vance's. To the immense relief of most everybody else, Snape got partnered with a visibly annoyed Will Avery. Then Sirius's named was called and he untangled his hand from Janice's and began making his way towards the next available table.

He had only made it a few steps when the professor read, "Evan Rosier."

Sirius nearly blurted his mental _Well, fuck me!_ aloud.

If Rosier's pale expression was anything to judge the situation by, Sirius was effectively communicating his displeasure without having to say the words. The other boy took his seat in equal silence and proceeded to hunch in on himself as if he thought it would make him disappear. It only served to annoy Sirius further.

They were assigned the number three and left to discuss which spell they wanted to use and how they could use the effects of the number to increase its effects. Sirius and Janice had decided prior to class that they would work on the Bubble-head Charm, which would be easy enough for them that they wouldn't be punishing themselves but difficult and unusual enough to earn them full marks. But it was clear from the questioning look that Janice was sending his way from next to her new partner, Lily Evans, that she still wanted to use the charm for her own assignment. Sirius ignored the glare Evans was sending his way and offered a smile and a brief nod to his girlfriend to let her know he didn't mind if she used their idea.

Rosier quietly suggested that they work on the Jelly-Fingers Curse, which had Sirius fighting the urge to roll his eyes. That was only marginally more inventive than the oft-chosen Jelly-Legs Curse.

"How about the Swelling Curse?" he suggested cruelly, then sat back further in his chair to better enjoy the flush of mixed embarrassment and anger that lit the other boy's entire face at the memory of their rather one-sided duel during first year.

Rosier didn't seem able to come up with a response for several moments, but eventually he settled on saying, "Listen, Sirius—"

"No, you listen," interrupted Sirius. "The only silver lining of this partnership is that there are two people in the class who I'd have liked working with even less than working with you. I'm not going to pretend to be happy about this."

"Fine," the other boy snapped, "but you are going to be civil and stop trying to antagonize me, because we both want an O in this class."

Sirius regarded Rosier's set jaw and flaring nostrils through narrowed gray eyes for a few long seconds, weighing his options. Given that he had no choice but to work with his former friend and he actually did want an O in the class, he didn't have many alternatives. But that didn't stop him from briefly considering whether he could manage the project by himself without Rosier's help, how much it would take to drive Rosier to drop the class, and even (for a moment) whether he actually needed an OWL in Arithmancy himself.

Maybe it was a bit childish to hold onto childhood grudges, as Rabastan had been telling him for a couple of years, but the kind of hurt and disappointment that he'd felt when Rosier had abandoned him obviously wasn't something that he could get over simply by telling himself that he needed to get over it.

Ultimately, he offered a clipped "Fine!" in return, and each of them turned to silently look through his own book for inspiration about which spell to choose for the assignment.

The week didn't get any better after that, as the next morning they were assigned an OWL project in Ancient Runes. The students were allowed to choose their own partners, but unfortunately for Sirius he sat alone at his table since Janice had dropped the class. He was just contemplating whether Remus would mind letting him work with Peter and had turned in his chair to ask them when Iris Hornby dropped her things on his table and took the seat next to his. Sirius had just enough time to meet Remus's laughing eyes before he was assaulted by the girl's high, excited voice.

"Oh, Sirius, I hope you don't mind partnering with me," she said. He would have informed her that, as a matter of fact, he did mind very much, but before he could open his mouth more than a sliver, she continued, "I've always thought we'd work well together, you know."

Sirius heard Peter snort from the table behind him. He wanted to point out that he was pretty sure he and Iris had never even spoken before, but Professor Dower chose that moment to stand from his desk. There was a last clatter of books against tables and wood chairs across the stone floor as stragglers settled at their new tables, which the professor surveyed with his arms crossed impatiently across his chest, and then a hush fell over the classroom.

"Good, I see that everyone has found a partner," declared Professor Dower, and Sirius had to resist the urge to groan aloud. In the next moment, the professor waved his wand and a dozen silver-colored necklaces levitated from somewhere behind his desk and came to rest in front of the students, one per pair. "Your task," the professor elaborated, "is to use only the runes we have gone over prior to today to create a protection charm out of the amulet I have provided."

"What do you mean by 'protection'?" asked Remus, after the professor had called on him.

Dower shrugged noncommittally. "That is up to you to interpret. OWL-level work requires you to be able to think on your feet and apply your knowledge to solve problems."

Sirius was sure that a standardized test couldn't possibly be as difficult and robust as their professors were making it out to be, and he didn't appreciate the air of condescension they all seemed to take on when they talked about it. As he looked around at his classmates, he thought that maybe most of the panic they felt about the OWLs was because their professors had focused for the past four years more on rote memorization and being able to cast individual spells than on magical theory and the ability to break down spells into their broadly applicable parts. Maybe Sirius would be just as panicked as most of his classmates seemed to be if he were only now being asked for the first time to apply what he had learned, but he had been lucky to have his early (illegal) lessons with his grandfather and to have spent several years under the tutelage of a dueling instructor who took practical application to the next level.

His more immediate concern was that Hornby seemed more interested in Sirius himself than in their assignment.

"Is it true about Edgecomb?" she asked as they were walking together after class, rather than respond to his inquiry about what sort of amulet she thought they should make, which had been the only reason he'd talked to her at all.

Sirius tried to stamp down his irritation. "Is what true?"

"Why, that she dropped Runes because the two of you broke up, of course!" replied Iris as she leaned over into his space as they walked.

Sirius blinked down at her. "What? Who told you that?"

" _Everyone's_ saying so," she insisted rather loudly, her pale eyes shining with excitement. Sirius could guess, from the way that the other Hufflepuff girls were listening in on their conversation, that "everyone" meant Iris Hornby and her friends. "They're saying that she's trying to avoid you after you broke up with her."

"I didn't break up with her," he tried to explain.

"You don't mean that she broke up with _you_?" cried Iris, as if she couldn't think of any possibility more outrageous.

"No one broke up with anyone. We're still together," Sirius explained again through clenched teeth. "It's a rather stupid rumor anyway, given that Janice and I have several other classes together, including another elective."

"Oh," said Iris.

They were no closer to figuring out what they were going to do for their project by the time Sirius and the girls went their separate ways on the first floor landing (he toward the library and they towards the Muggle Studies classroom). Sirius could only hope that Iris would prove to be a more serious partner going forward, because since he had chosen to take only two electives he expected to receive an Outstanding in each of them. He hadn't chosen the minimum of two electives because he was lazy or simply didn't want to sit the exams for the others, as most of his classmates had, but he had done it because he fully intended to continue onto the NEWT level in all nine of his subjects rather than dropping two or three of the core subjects like most students did after OWLs. Sirius would be incredibly displeased if Hornby cost him top marks in Ancient Runes.

By Friday, Sirius still hadn't managed to get a straight answer from Iris. At dinner that evening after a particularly trying conversation with the girl, he complained, "I guess I'm just going to have to do the project by myself and let her leech off my work."

"Why don't you tell Professor Dower?" asked Remus, at the same time James said, "I'm sure she's just tired from all the flirting."

Choosing to ignore James, Sirius turned towards the smaller boy. "I don't want to tattle to a grown up. Besides, Dower's a real hard-ass. He'd probably just feed me some line about it being his job to prepare me to do other peoples' work in the real world."

"This is why you should have taken Care of Magical Creatures with me," inserted James.

"But Care isn't useful at all."

Remus and Peter both shifted uncomfortably in their seats, though neither tried to stop the oncoming disagreement. They had both figured out ages ago how useless it was to try.

"Not useful?" repeated James. He waved the drumstick he was holding in Sirius's general direction. "And I suppose that you'll need to use the runic alphabet loads more often than you'll encounter magical creatures in the magical world."

Of course, runes were used in more everyday situations than James was giving them credit for. Sirius was more likely to encounter wards and magical objects or need to break down the components of a spell than he was to encounter a magical creature he needed to know how to take care of. But he had very little patience for an academic debate at that point—the past week of classes had been the worst he'd had since first year.

Instead of making any sort of intelligent point, he said, "If I never decide to expand the family business into Kelpie breeding, I'll be sure to hire you rather than clean the tanks myself."

The dispute likely would have devolved into a real argument, except that they were all distracted by the arrival of the evening mail. Sirius immediately lost interest in James and turned to watch the incoming owls. Aquila wasn't among them, and, more importantly, neither was Rabastan's vicious eagle owl.

The first Hogsmeade trip of the year was the next day, and he still hadn't received a single owl from Rabastan despite the other boy's promises. Sirius had been thinking about seeing him again since the day they'd parted—their last day together was frequently on his mind, obviously, and Sirius had even been dreaming (and daydreaming) about going further. Maybe reciprocating for Rabastan. Maybe even going all the way.

He had a brief moment of doubt. Maybe Rabastan really didn't want him after all and just hadn't wanted to say it to his face. But no… Sirius was a fucking catch, thank you very much, and anyway Rabastan wasn't shy about sharing his feelings. So it had to be something else. Not that he could think of any excuse at all to justify not even sending so much as an owl for nearly two months.

James had clearly said something to him, probably continuing their debate, but Sirius hadn't heard. It seemed like all he could hear was the blood rushing behind his ears.

Without another word to any of his friends, he stood from the table and stalked out of the Great Hall to lick his wounds in private.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Thank you for everybody who is sticking with this story, especially those of you who have left wonderful, insightful, encouraging reviews. Rest assured that I am still working on this story no matter how busy I get, even if, as Angelica would say, I got 'sponserbilities now.


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